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Organic Gardening

Cardboard Shredding, Shredding Cardboard

13 years ago

Hello everyone,

Just a quick note, I did post this in the vermiculture forum.

I have a tiny space in town and cannot very well be building a land fill in my back yard - but I do not want to give my cardboard away - I figure I paid for it and I want any carbon value that it contains. I feed it (some of it) to my worms and any that I would put in my compost pile would - could not look like trash - therefor it needs to be shredded.

I have tried the Office Mart shredder and destroyed it; of course it is built not to be fixed but there are others, costlier, but less than machines advertised as cardboard shredders, that will shred stacks of papers.

Has anyone tried and succeeded in finding a way to shred cardboard, without spending $3,000+ on a machine?

I appreciate the quickness that wet cardboard will deteriorate, and if I had a larger back yard and the ability to dispose of my cardboard year round, then it would not be an issue. Having to save the materials for the summer months makes for a mess but shredded can be used for packing materials, worm bedding and compost carbon.

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Comments (6)

christ
13 years ago
OK, guess I should have said it works perfectly in my usage of it.

Here is a link that might be useful: chi flat iron
sandhill_farms
13 years ago
Ah - another "SPAMMER!"
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Unless you had lots of manure to till in along with the paper it would not be good for your soil, or any plants, to till in that paper. Tilling paper into the soil would result in all available Nitrogen to be used by the soil bacteria to digest that high carbon material. Rather than shredding the paper you could lay it on the soil and cover it with shredded leaves, something you should have lots of in Pennsylvania, and that would help your soil and not hinder plant growth.
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Earthworms, and other members of the Soil Food Web, like the soil conditions created when mulches are used, cool, moist soil, so any material used as a mulch will get them there. Shredded cardboard will work, but I am not sure that the extra labor involved in shredding cardboard is really worth the effort. I see very little difference in my soil if the cardboard is laid down unshredded or if I shred it, except I need more shredded cardboard to get the same results as with unshredded cardboard, and the shredded cardboard allows more "weed" growth then the unshredded cardboard does.
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I got a paper shredder that eats cardboard so long as it isn't too thick. My old paper shredder did eat cardboard for a little while but then I think we fed it too much and it broke. The fellows power shred seems to do pretty well with cardboard. I got one that doesn't take that many sheets of paper at once but it is rated to run alot and still seems to take most corrigated cardboard. This is all if you really need shredded cardboard. I like to use large sheets of cardboard as the bottom layer for new lasagna beds. I only shred cardboard for use as cover materials in compost buckets or for new bedding in the worm bin. The worms don't really need it shredded as they are quite happy with layers of big cardboard over top of their bedding. A bit of moisture and the cardboard tends to fall apart. I've also found that simply dipping cardboard into a bin or bucket of water will make pealing off tape quite easy and leaving the box in the water for more than a moment will allow it to fall apart really easily.
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A real good way to shred it if you wanna spend the money on beer rather than a shredder that'll not work very well anyway: get a box cutter with a razor blade and a piece of old carpet, put the cardboard on the carpet and become the slasher. You can cut it into strips and squares or just slice away. In a couple of minutes you can relieve a lot of pent up frustration and produce a large amount of worm-worthy cardboard bedding. Chuckiebtoo
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david52 Zone 6
13 years ago
I don't know how much cardboard you're talking about, but here we get approx two or three boxes a week. With this amount, you could pull them apart until they're flat, put them in the garden somewhere, get them wet with a watering can, and stack them up you could do this with hundreds of the things because they all flatten out. Perhaps for aesthetics putting an old tarp or blanket over them. I'd bet they'd start to disintegrate by spring.
mogardener
13 years ago
Why not use them as the base for a lasagne bed or laid under perennials with a covering of mulch?
paulaj
13 years ago
Maybe there is a mobile shredding service near where you live. You could get some shredded and carry it home in some intact boxes.
I love shredded cardboard and save it from work when one vendor we have sends their stuff packed in it.
dfcash55
13 years ago
I'm not totally sure why you don't just recycle the cardboard. Your kitchen, trees, etc. should be able to give you as much compost as you need. Recycling is better for the planet as fewer trees will need to be cut down and less energy is used when recycling than logging. If you want to compost it, why not recycle it then buy tissue and paper towels made from recycled paper and use that as compost, this was the maximum value is squeezed from all the trees that are cut down to make paper.

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